The Playlist: August 10, 2012

The 5 Tracks You Need To Know About This Weekend

"There He Go" is his latest single, a classic piece of foulmouthed self-aggrandizement that is elevated into mastery by its fantastically left-field Menomena sample.

Every week, AskMen highlights the rad, the bad and the straight-up sad in music. This week: Drake's not-so-well-received take on Aaliyah, Passion's Pit latest and the newest female rapper on the block.

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"Constant Conversations" by Passion Pit

What Passion Pit communicated best on their last album, Manners, was joyous exuberance. Michael Angelakos' high-pitched vocals and cheery choruses suggested an excitable soul, yet a closer study of his lyrics (and his recent hospitalizations and tour cancellations) reveals his struggles with bipolar disorder. Where his previous album's "The Reeling" revealed he felt the "madness inch by inch," this new single addresses the adulation and success his work has brought him: "They love you when they need you/But someday you're gonna need another kind of place to go." It turns out no number of fans can completely cure you, not even when, as we see in the video, they include Hollywood legend Peter Bogdanovich and the adorable Analeigh Tipton.

"Inside My Love" by Delilah

Aside from being the mother of comic genius Maya Rudolph, Minnie Riperton was once the queen of the slow jam. Even now, her 1975 singles "Lovin' You" and "Inside My Love" remain staples of softcore soul radio. Tackling one of these on your first album is daring, to say the least, as you could easily be mistaken for that worst of the worst, a smooth-jazz peddler. And though UK peers like Lianne La Havas occasionally dip into that dark, bland well, Delilah's Riperton cover is sexy without being smooth. As the sultry video attests, the desire she evokes is of a darker, bothered breed, closer in fact to Portishead, the xx and even Nine Inch Nails.

"New York" by Angel Haze

It's a glorious time for female rappers. After being wooed by the wacky neon politics of M.I.A., the filthy works of Azealia Banks and those of Nicki Minaj (whose career reached a tragic nadir in the dumbed-down dubstep of new single "Pound the Alarm"), we are now introduced to Angel Haze, a 20-year-old New Yorker with skills to rival the ladies listed above. Her beats are sweet, too, the clappiest this side of Lumidee (this song samples the recently deceased Gil Scott-Heron). The grim, horror-movie video shows Angel as some dark vigilante roaming the city's underworld, a far cry, let's say, from Alicia Keys' awkward stand-up piano work in "Empire State of Mind."

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"There He Go" by ScHoolboy Q

Part of a school of rising rappers such as Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q is an ex-college football player and self-described ex-gangbanger who's been making a name for himself in hip-hop since 2011's Setbacks album. "There He Go" is his latest single, a classic piece of foulmouthed self-aggrandizement that is elevated into mastery by its fantastically left-field Menomena sample. The video adds some extra doses of street realness, with cameo appearances by ScHoolboy's young daughter and some great orange animations.

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"Enough Said" by Aaliyah, featuring Drake

It comes as a severe disappointment to learn that Drake will be producing Aaliyah's second posthumous album (especially to a longtime fan whose dream Aaliyah release is her rumored Trent Reznor collaboration). Perhaps the original recording was already too unfocused, but Drake's added beats and rhymes, as on blubbery display in this track, are simply too cloudy and tepid for a vocal artist of Aaliyah's stature and skill. Especially seen in retrospect, Aaliyah's work with Timbaland ("Try Again," "Are You That Somebody?") was so precise, so masterfully timed and phrased, that it's a shame to hear her deathless voice smothered in Drizzy's trademark murk.